Please help! Need a good grammar exercise book...

[sjg_13777]

Hajimemashite, Sergio (Se-ru-hyo) to mooshimasu

I have been studying Japanese now for a long, long time. I think I must thank you all because this forum really helps me improving my Japanese even more.

I think I have now nearly the level I need to take the 1-kyuu exam, so maybe this year is the time to do it!

But I think I must say my biggest pitfall now to achieve language proficiency is mastering its grammar... I have always neglected it because Japanese grammar seemed always so easy... I could understand mangas and videogames at first, grammar was no problem at all. Now I can read novels at a really fast pace, and understand them fairly well.

But I have realised too late that my speaking ability in terms of grammar is really poor, so I say to myself, I must put a solution to it!

I am reading now A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar and A Dictionary of Intermediate Japanese Grammar. I find these books really interesting, they seem really complete and the grammar is displayed so as to be useful to foreign learners of Japanese. I intend to read too A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar, what do you think of this one?

But what I REALLY miss is a big, voluminous book of grammar exercises that treats the topics in the books I have indicated. As a student of English I had grammar books from Cambridge University Press (or Oxford), like Essential Grammar in Use and English Grammar in Use. They were so great books that I made a small collection of them, but I miss these types of books to learn Japanese grammar. Or maybe I haven't happened to find them on online book stores

Any ideas you could propose me?

[Droppo]

If you're looking for a book that covers level 1 grammar, 完全マスター has a very good one called "日本語能力試験文法問題対策". I don't know where you are living right now, but if it's in the US you can get it from thejapanshop.com. Otherwise, you could get it from amazon.co.jp, but their shipping prices are expensive. "どんな時どう使う日本語表現文型500" is also very good, and it also covers level 2 grammar.

[JanneM]

I used 完全マスター for level 2, and using どんな時どう使う now when studying for level 1. For me, the latter is better, both for the organization and because it makes me review the level 2 grammar as well.

Either is good, basically - and both need to be used together with a separate grammar dictionary - but they differ a lot in organization. To simplify a bit, 完全マスター puts grammar structures that sound the same together even if the meanings are completely unrelated, while どんな時どう使う puts grammar points with similar meaning together even if they look or sound nothing like each other.

To me, the latter is better, simply because my main problem is often understanding and remembering the subtle differences between very similar expressions (when do you use ように and when 上で for "in order to") and explaining them together makes the differences explicit. If your main problem is keeping track of the different meanings of identical or similar expressions (ように can mean "in order to", "as", or "says to"; then you have ようにして, ようになる and so on to confuse you) then 完全マスター will probably make it a bit easier to keep them apart.

They're pretty cheap; get both and look them over.

[Eomer]

If it's questions for JLPT grammar you want, try this site:-

http://n-lab.kir.jp/library/index.html

click on　問題検索室

There's a lot of grammar questions on there.

[sjg_13777]

Thank you, I think I'll give these books a try.

By the way, has any of you どんな時どう使う 日本語表現文型辞典? It is one of the どんな時どう使う series, but organized in the form of a dictionary. It is to a certain extent similar to A Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate Japanese Grammar, but I could only read a few pages in Amazon Japan, I can't tell for sure if it is really a good one for me. What do you think of this one?

http://www.amazon.co.jp/gp/product/4757412355/ref=sib_rdr_dp

[JanneM]

That is the companion grammar dictionary I mentioned in my post above. The grammar works book don't explain any of the grammar; they just make you practice it. If you're getting the grammar book, get this one as well. It's cheap and pretty well laid out.

More generally I can say that while I used "A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar" a lot when I first started, I never use it, or the intermediate one, any more. I use the above dictionary together with 日本語文型辞典; the どんな時どう使う 日本語表現文型辞典 has easier, more condensed explanations focused on the example sentences, while 日本語文型辞典 gives a more in-depth reasoning around when and how you use a given grammar point - it is also covers quite a bit more grammar.

Edit: I should clarify that the どんな時どう使う 日本語表現文型辞典 is not really meant to be a standalone grammar dictionary, but a companion volume to the grammar training books by the same company. It explicitly lists only grammar that comes up on the JLPT, and does not really explain things beyond what you need for the test. For that reason, you really should get a separate, "real" grammar like the one I mention above as well.